


Common Courtesy

by Sixthlight



Series: Mostly Ceremonial [6]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen, M/M, Public Transportation, best nemeses forever, wedding anniversary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 04:11:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8189260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: I found it very hard to believe, when I stepped onto the train and saw Lesley May sitting half-way down the carriage, that it was a coincidence.





	

There are eight million people in London and nearly ten million in the greater urban area, give or take a few tens of thousands. That’s more than ten percent of the total population of the UK. You could move the entire population of Sierra Leone in and still have room for the inhabitants of a respectably-sized city. Which is why I found it very hard to believe, when I stepped onto a train at Green Park Station and saw Lesley May sitting half-way down the carriage, that it was a coincidence.

I went and sat down next to her, keeping my hands in view the whole time. She looked at me sideways, but didn’t say anything, as if I was just another commuter, or maybe a tourist who didn’t understand the rules of personal space on the Tube. After all, there were barely other five people in there.

“Fancy seeing you here,” I said, as we started moving.

“Knew I shouldn’t have bothered getting out of bed this morning,” she said.

I felt this was somewhat uncalled for, even if, technically speaking, I should try and arrest her. _Try_ would be the operative word. I didn’t like the idea of starting a magical duel on the Tube. Lesley wouldn’t play fair, and Jaget Kumar would never let me hear the end of it if I managed to block up the line at two in the afternoon on a workday. Again. “Lovely to see you too.”

Lesley didn’t say anything. The train rattled on. 

“I still can’t believe you got married and didn’t invite me,” she said after a minute or so, out of absolutely nowhere. “And you call me a friend.”

“I didn’t get to invite my _mum_ , Lesley, it wasn’t personal.” Not that I could have – oh, what am I saying; if I’d gotten married with enough time to invite anybody, I’d have told Zach to tell Lesley about it. I don’t know if she’d have come, but she couldn’t have complained, anyhow.

“Beverley was there,” Lesley said.

“Her sister made the whole thing happen, of course Bev was there. She show you any pictures?”

“Yeah,” Lesley said. “You both looked like someone had knocked you over the head. It was a bit tragic.”

“Great. Thanks.”

I’d never actually seen these pictures, although Beverley had offered to show them to me once. Someday I should ask her about it again. It didn’t seem quite right not having any pictures of my own wedding, no matter the circumstances. Not that I’d wanted them _then_ , but that was then and this was now.

“Still,” Lesley went on. “At least I won my bet.”

“Wait. What bet?”

“The pool at Belgravia? The one Guleed –”

“ _You_ put a bet down in _that_ pool? Are you serious?”

“It was a joke!” Lesley’s voice rose above the socially acceptable level for British public transport, and she said the rest in furtively lowered tones. Not a whisper, because that just makes everyone else within earshot listen harder, in our case all three of them. The closest one, a sharp-nosed bloke with a classic seventies-style afro, was wearing an enormous set of wireless headphones anyway. “It wasn’t meant to be real, but I heard about it and I figured – what the hell, I’ll put down a fiver.”

“I thought you knew better than that,” I said, and I tried not to sound bitter, honest, but here’s the thing: everybody who ever gave me crap after the whole marriage incident was someone who didn’t really _know_ me that well, let alone Nightingale. They saw stuff that wasn’t there and – well, maybe some of it was there, maybe, but most of it wasn’t. Not then, anyway. And Lesley had known, should have known, me well enough to see that.

“You listened to me,” Lesley said. “Or you used to, back when. But Nightingale shows up and you think he’s the best thing ever, no matter what I think, and it’s not because you can’t be a right suspicious bastard if you feel like it, and then you _kept_ thinking that.”

“Yeah, which didn’t fucking mean -”

“Nah, I know. I figured it was going to be the great bromance of the Met. Specially after you and Bev, you know. Figured even if you were a little bit – there was no way you were ever going to realise it, you didn’t think about yourself that way. Shows what I knew.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “I figured you really wanted to be – to join us, work our patch. Shows what I knew.”

That should have been over the line, on prior experience, but Lesley took it with good grace. All she did was look away. We pulled into Piccadilly and I figured she’d make a dash for it but she didn’t; just sat there, looking into the middle distance like any good commuter, while the man with the headphones got off and several more people got on – a middle-aged Asian woman in a blue-and-silver dupatta, a couple of kids who should have been in school, a skinny blond guy in a Chelsea jersey.

“So,” I said when the doors had closed. “You still seeing Zach? I don’t ask so he doesn’t have to lie to me. Easier on both of us.”

“No,” Lesley said, frowning at me suspiciously. It didn’t look at all like her old frown. The thought made my chest twinge. 

“Anybody else? Just so I can avoid asking them, too.”

“Where is this going?” she demanded. “And why do you care, all of a sudden?”

“We just had the uncomfortable interrogation about _my_ love life,” I said. “Only seems fair. I wouldn’t want this to all go one way.”

The train started to slow again; it wasn’t far between Piccadilly and Leicester Square. Lesley gurgled a little laugh; I felt the corner of my mouth twitch up, involuntarily. “Your _love_ life, Peter?”

“Uh,” I said.

“As fascinating as this conversation could undoubtedly prove to be,” she said, “it’ll have to wait for another time.”

I’m not stupid, but Lesley’s timing was excellent as always. The doors had hissed open as she’d begun speaking, and she darted out as the warning beeps were sounding. I went after her, of course, making a good grab for her arm, but she pulled away and I barely avoided slamming face-first into the door.

“If she doesn’t want to talk to you, she doesn’t want to talk to you,” said the woman in the dupatta disapprovingly in a strong Yorkshire accent. I didn’t want to turn around; I could guess how that had looked to the rest of the carriage, tall black guy grabbing at a small white woman. When I did look, even the truants were glancing suspiciously at me, while pretending to be buried in their phones. I sat back down, and didn’t look up. My warrant card would only have made it worse, probably.

I bailed at Covent Garden and walked the rest of the way to avoid the attention, even though it was raining, which was why I hadn’t walked in the first place. If someone _did_ decide to call the BTP, Jaget would never let me hear the end of it. It stopped drizzling before I’d gone a hundred metres, which I decided was a good sign.

Nightingale wasn’t there when I got back to the Folly, so I went down to the kitchen to make myself a coffee to accompany paperwork, and to put off the other thing I had to do. Molly was in the middle of making dinner, Toby trotting hopefully around the kitchen after her. She glanced inquiringly at me; I must have been dragging my feet or something.

“Ran into Lesley on the Tube,” I told her. “She legged it and the whole carriage looked at me like I’d smacked her one then and there.”

Molly laughed, all vaguely disturbing hissing and sharp white teeth.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I’m sure you and she would have had a lovely catch-up.”

She arched a smug eyebrow and turned back to her chopping board. I don’t actually know if Molly’s ever seen Lesley since she left. It’s one of those things I’m better off not asking about.

Nightingale found me a little while after, staring at my phone. I had about five minutes until my failure to contact the DPS tipped from _reasonable delay_ to _suspicious procrastination_.

“I saw Lesley on the tube,” I said.

“Oh.” He tilted his head, studying me. “Did you have a nice chat?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it can’t have been that bad.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “She told me off about not inviting her to the wedding.”

Nightingale laughed, a small involuntary sound of startlement more than amusement. “Did she really?”

“Bev showed her some photos,” I said. “I don’t remember her taking them, do you?”

“No,” he said. “I was somewhat distracted. I remember your shoes were very muddy.”

“So were yours,” I said. We’d both been looking at the ground a lot. I remembered a lot of other things, though; the feeling of my ring, the way we’d grabbed at each other’s hands, mouthing the unfamiliar Latin vows.

“Have you ever gotten copies?” Nightingale asked. “Of the photos, I mean. Files, or – however you share them, these days, since nobody seems to get prints anymore.”

“No, I…” I had to think about this. “I keep meaning to. Bev’s offered. It seems like the sort of thing…”

“Yes,” he said, with the same sort of wry smile I thought I might be wearing. I still wasn’t ready quite yet to look at those photos and see what had been on my face that day; I didn’t think he was either. But I met his eyes and thought we would be, sometime. Maybe sometime soon.

“Have you…” he nodded at the phone. “Lesley.”

“Not yet,” I said. “I – everybody else gets to talk to her, Bev and Zach and whoever and I think maybe even _Molly_ , and I don’t. Or I do and it’s like this. It can’t just be a conversation.”

It would be easier, right now, if he just told me to do it; except it wouldn’t, and he wasn’t going to. This was one of those difficult things that’s why DPS has such strong feelings on the topic of relationships up and down the chain of command. They might have a point.

Although I don’t think it would have made any difference if this had happened a year ago.  

“Technically,” I said, “I’ve already reported the contact to you.”

“You know where the lines are, Peter,” was all he said, and left me to it. I picked up the phone and made the call.

I didn’t even get called in to face the thumbscrews the next day, which means DPS is either sick of the whole thing or getting slack. On a professional level, I do hope it’s the former. 

*

A week letter we got something in the post addressed to both of us. It felt like a card, and it was; anniversary congratulations. It was a day or two early, but it wasn’t wrong. We both sort of stared at it nervously, and then at each other. It looked so normal. The sort of thing you’d send to anybody, on their first wedding anniversary. We hadn’t talked about what we were going to do about that. If we were going to do anything.

I’d kept my evening free, though, and I knew Nightingale had too.

The thing that really had us staring, though, was that the card was from Lesley. She’d sent us one on the occasion, of course, or rather just after; _I hope you know what you’re doing_ , and no signature. It had been what you might call ambiguous, as messages go.

This one said _Dear Peter and Thomas_ , then a pre-printed message, the usual sort of thing, and afterwards: _You might know what you’re doing after all. Lesley_.

“Well that’s – something,” I said. “What do you think it means?”

 “I have no idea,” said Nightingale, closing the card and turning it over; there wasn’t anything on the back. He looked – happy, almost, and I wasn’t sure why. Well, I had some theories, but nothing I’d have laid a bet on.

“The next time you see her,” he added thoughtfully, “you should try and find out.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I would have sworn until quite recently I wasn't going to be able to write the Lesley MC!verse story until after _The Hanging Tree_ , but apparently the imminent prospect of that book, like the object for which it is named, has sharpened my mind considerably.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Common Courtesy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11454501) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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